A Brief Foray into the Dramaturgy of Lucian Blaga

Sweden & Romania, ID LLCE2016-236; The article makes a brief presentation of each of the ten plays written by Lucian Blaga, with a focus both on Romanian mythology/history/cultural identity and on the European influences (such as philosophical - Spengler, Nietzsche, psychological - Jung, Freud, literary - Wedekind, Strindberg). In “Tulburarea apelor” (“Whirling Waters”, 1923) the author imagines an Orthodox Romanian priest from Transylvania which, at 1540, strives to find out a new spiritual path for his people. In “Meșterul Manole” (“Manole, the Master Mason”, 1927) Mira is the perfect purity where the demonic of the master mason has no access. The craftsman’s wife is the embodiment of innocence, the heavenly depiction of mankind as opposed to demonic Manole. In “Cruciada copiilor” (“The Children’s Crusade”, 1930) the Fortress itself is a place that could not be geographically mapped for it is not a real realm, but a mythical world, an imaginary boundary between reality and fairy-tale, a mental concept where the authentic ancient spiritual features of the patriarchal original Romanian culture and civilization still survive. The Romanian apriorism, the presumed autochthonous ancestral mentality had no means to express itself through tragic drama in the antiquity. Thus the playwright Lucian Blaga introduces the presumptive conception by means of modern methods.